W J Adams Esq CMG
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pr. 243/1 Mon
Miss
Refugees GARITISH EMBASSY коридей Стебнию Ичени
CONFIDENTIAL
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Mr. Clefr
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
LONDON SW 1
HKK 243/1
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
-3 JUN 1983
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VIETNAMESE REFUGEES: US VIEWS
WASHINGTON,
20 May 1983
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substantive reply".
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1. You will by now have seen Eugene Douglas' response (our telegram no 1408 to our demarche on behalf of Hong Kong, based on the instructions in FCO telegram No 770. Although, as you will have realised from our several exchanges with the Americans on this subject in the last year, and from reporting from this Embassy, I had no expectations of any immediate relief as a result of this demarche, I thought it right to take the matter up at this level, partly in order to ensure that Hong Kong and its problems are kept in the forefront of American minds, and partly because a reading taken lower down the bureaucratic scale would have been less helpful.
I am sure that Douglas
2. I found the result illuminating. personally is well aware of Hong Kong's problems and that his staff do consider with him what the US Government should be doing there. But he was not giving me much quarter. I had not met him before and it may be partly a question of style. But I was impressed by the outspoken firmness and authority with which he spoke. It would be unusual in Washington to find all the threads of policy coming together in the hands of one individual. But on this issue he seems, for better or worse, to be an influential force in the White House and with Congress.
3.
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It seen became apparent that Douglas had had fairly full exchanges either last month when he visited Ditchley, or last November in London, with those most involved in London, and had a fairly full and accurate picture of the political realities at home. So much of what follows will be familiar to you. His initial comments, anticipating what I was going to say, were a characteristically forthright exposition of US priorities such as we have heard from him before. He said we should not imagine that his job was popular in Washington, or that there was a constituency here for resettling refugees. Whether we liked it or not, Hong Kong was seen by the world as a British problem and, leaving aside questions of morality, it was idle to pretend that either HM Government nor the Hong Kong Government could afford to sully its reputation by turning refugees out to sea. In the
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